"It doesn't really feel like it's got anything to do with me. I mean, I know I wrote it, and all that and invented the characters and made it up, but it's Mike's film, so doing the press and stuff, it feels a little bit inauthentic. I was just one component of it"
About this Quote
Self-effacement can be its own kind of flex, and Patrick Marber knows it. He’s describing the strange afterlife of authorship: the moment when a story leaves the page and becomes an industrial object, owned emotionally and culturally by whoever gets to point the camera. Marber’s insistence that it’s “Mike’s film” (a nod to director Mike Nichols) isn’t just politeness; it’s a recognition of how film collapses individual credit into a single public-facing auteur. The writer, despite being the origin point, becomes “one component” in a machine that rewards visible authority.
The subtext is discomfort with performance. Press isn’t about craft; it’s about narrative control, and Marber’s claiming he doesn’t have standing to sell a product that no longer feels like his. “Inauthentic” is doing heavy lifting here: he’s not questioning whether he contributed, he’s questioning whether he’s the right spokesperson for what the work has become. That’s a quiet critique of publicity culture, where sincerity is demanded from people hired for their proximity, not their agency.
Context matters: Marber comes out of theatre, where the writer’s role is clearer, the text more sovereign, and the translation from rehearsal room to audience less mediated by capital and branding. In Hollywood’s ecosystem, authorship is redistributed, sometimes erased, and Marber’s careful phrasing captures that loss without melodrama. He’s not disowning the work; he’s acknowledging the film as a new artifact with a new owner, and admitting that being “the writer” doesn’t automatically grant you authenticity in its public telling.
The subtext is discomfort with performance. Press isn’t about craft; it’s about narrative control, and Marber’s claiming he doesn’t have standing to sell a product that no longer feels like his. “Inauthentic” is doing heavy lifting here: he’s not questioning whether he contributed, he’s questioning whether he’s the right spokesperson for what the work has become. That’s a quiet critique of publicity culture, where sincerity is demanded from people hired for their proximity, not their agency.
Context matters: Marber comes out of theatre, where the writer’s role is clearer, the text more sovereign, and the translation from rehearsal room to audience less mediated by capital and branding. In Hollywood’s ecosystem, authorship is redistributed, sometimes erased, and Marber’s careful phrasing captures that loss without melodrama. He’s not disowning the work; he’s acknowledging the film as a new artifact with a new owner, and admitting that being “the writer” doesn’t automatically grant you authenticity in its public telling.
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| Topic | Movie |
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